i'll tell you all how the story ends

i took a break from writing kpop fics around late february. the last fic i posted was around september last year. the reason was as simple as they come - i wasn't having much fun with writing, not to mention the whole Situation(TM) in the kpop fandom(s).

around the same time i decided to (once again) come back to the place that gave me the most space to spread my creative wings - warrior cats role play forum. as silly as it may sound, there's something comforting in creating a character in a world so simple yet so nuanced as this pbf's*. it's been around since 2007 i think, and i used to play there in high school, well before i got into kpop and "serious" fic writing, if writing fic could ever be called serious.

(*for anyone who wasn't around on the internet in the last decade and a half: pbf - play-by-forum. a way of roleplaying where the players all post on a forum board as their characters, sometimes with separate accounts for every character. the posts contain decriptions of what the character is doing and/or saying.)

also around september i found out i would actually be attending college again, this time studying something i had at least a mild interest in and planned to actually finish with a degree that i won't ever use for anything other than jokes. "the knowledge of film and audiovisual media" is a very long way of saying that i will have some basic understanding of any kind of media, but specifically movies. that lead to me writing stuff for classes - not only my first original fiction in literal years, but also my first serious stuff written in polish in 10 years at least. going so long without putting ideas onto a page in your native language does a number to your brain, maybe i'll talk about it someday. either way, i learned a shitton of things about the way stories are constructed. if i come back to writing fics, they're going to fit into the 3 act structure so sexily whenever i'd want them to.

and all this time, there's been something, like a swarm of ideas, rattling around in my skull. they weren't much, and some of them would require a lot of research, so i didn't even start working on them. i did make a pinterest board for one of them*; otherwise i just collected whatever inspired me to think about them on my tumblr blog or in one of my many notion notes. and that was it. some quotes, some artworks. just a bunch of stuff to keep my brain feeling fuzzy. maybe one day i'll write more about them here, but for now i'm scare that if i let them see the light of the internet in any shape or form, they might run away from me and never get finished nor started.

(*you can see it [here] but i don't think it would make any sense without whatever jumps around my cortex rn)

the problem started when i tried to actually focus on one of those ideas. i started jotting down the tropes that i wanted to play on, and the ones i wanted to avoid, the ones i wanted to bend and the ones i wanted to break into pieces and reassemble into something new. i went out of my way and tried reading more books in the genres i wanted to blend, i picked up stuff i would never notice and dug through libgen for books i've never thought existed. i started taking notes on who i wanted the characters to be. i started thinking about the world they enhabit.

and i found that i was stuck.

without the crutch of as much as a name and some archetypes that writing fanfiction gave me, i was completely lost. not even a semblance of a foothold, and i was drowning in the amount of things i had to come up with. somehow it's easier for me to have any kind of borders and limits than not having any at all. but this swarm, those ideas, don't care at all about what i find easy or hard or challenging. they want to be out of my brain, and that weird force, this creative current is absolutely all i can think about now.

there's a story inside me, crawling, coiling, rattling, eating me alive; it's trying to get out. it burns and i want it to be born already, but i have no idea how to get the energy to do it.

i'm so tired.

i hate deadlines, especially close ones. writing takes time - planning, editing, digging through thesaurus to find the perfect synonym, and (in my case) also translating the words already written to the closest possible english ones - it all takes more time than anyone would like to admit and cares to take into consideration.

that's why i still can't believe that in 2019 i decided to celebrate my two closest twitter friends' birthdays with publishing fanfics written specifically for them. this is the first one that was born in those circumstances, and i'll talk about the other on another day. either way...

i used to have really good contact with debbie - as far as twitter-only frienship can go, i'd say we were exactly that, friends. nowadays, we don't talk anymore, and i have no idea where the fates took her, but i do hope she's in a good place and enjoys whatever she's doing. i hope life treats her kindly. still, this fic remains as a weird kind of statue, a timeless proof of a friendship once existing. there are two things you need to know about debbie to get this fic - she liked hozier, her favourite song of his was take me to church;, and she loved lipves. i had (still have) a policy of never writing a fic to the same song twice, so i picked the next best thing.

and so, this fic came to be.

i started it way too late, but at this point i don't remember why. maybe because i was working on something else; maybe because i believe it was the time when i started a new job. whatever it was, it's the reason why this fic feels as rushed. because, truly, i was rushing it. (i still didn't manage to hit the deadline on time - i think i published it several days too late. but it's the thought that counts, right? or so i've been told.)

here's a fun fact - i used to attend dance class when i was in primary school. i was truly horrible; limbs too long, moves too rigid, no rhythm or coherence to save my life. but i was there, and i learned a thing or two. (the most important lesson was to never dance again, but alas.) and i've seen people dance a lot. and i saw how beautiful and expressive dancing can be. maybe interpreting "movement" as "dance" is the most basic thing in the world, but come on, it works so well here. then you add the fact that yves is supposed to be one of the best dancers in loona, and you have a perfect storm.

ruined only by the fact that i didn't have enough time and energy to fully commit to writing it out. that's why from a slow description of lip's career as a dancer we go straight to yves' performance and then, without a break, to them training and - presumably - being in a relationship together, if the last line of the fic is anything to go by. in a weird, twisted way, it works perfectly; there's some kind of parallel to be drawn between a dance performance and the way this fic flows, with some sharp turns and gentle yet determined flow. some part of that is thanks to my conscious choice of using present tense instead of past, as i believe it makes the scenes flow more naturally in front of the reader's mind's eye. but maybe that's just me.

i wish i could explore lip's character more in this fic, because oh lord where do i even start. there's something painfully poetic and tragic when you hate the only thing you're told you're capable of, the feeling of being broken when you can no longer feel good about your art, be it dancing, writing, drawing, whatever you pursued out of passion. she ends up cutting herself off from any kind of emotions connected to dancing then and they only return to her when she sees yves dance, all of what she loved about the art overflowing her in one powerful wave. something something poetic cinema. someone take this idea and run with it, as i can't because my legs are too clumsy to dance, let alone run a marathon like that.

in the end, debbie enjoyed this fic, if i remember correctly, and that's all that matters to me. still, if i were to rewrite only one fic out of this hozier series of mine, it would be this one. the idea is too good; it - and debbie - simply deserved something better.

something about hozier's songs makes me go absolutely feral.

maybe it's my love for all the sounds of the guitars, or maybe that perfect mix of blues and folk and dark nights and endless forests that makes my brain both calm down and kick into the overdrive. or maybe it's the lyrics verging on poetry just enough to be vague but still understandable by me. or maybe it's how he sings them, like his life depended on it.

whatever it is, it makes me want to write.

while the main theme in most of his songs is very clear - it's love, duh - i find myself almost endlessly fascinated by the wide range of how varied this theme is from song to song. It's the endless devotion to your lover bordering on worship in take me to church, foreigner's god or work song. It's the gentleness of finally finding peace in like real people do or in a week. It's the affection in movement or grisly dedication in shrike and the dysfunctional relationships in cherry wine and almost.

i could go on, but that's not the point.

the point is, love and relationships between two people are so ever-present in hozier's pieces, i understand why so many fics (and probably original fiction as well) were born out of some of the more popular ones. so why not take all of his songs and turn them into a series, each of the installments connected with each other just by their inspiration being hozier's discography?

that's exactly the challenge that I decided to take up. match every song with a loona pairing and write a short story based on the lyrics and the general feel. why loona? the amount of possible couples, possible dynamics, even if the unnie and maknae lines are separated, makes the task of picking and matching 34 of them to songs an easy feat.

granted, at first that wasn't my idea at all. i was just writing one ficlet based on one song, and then decided to write another as a gift, and then another, and... now i'm sitting at seven completed fics and seven wips. only twenty more songs to go!

here are the links to my thoughts on each of the published fics so far, linked as i write and put them out here. i hope you'll enjoy this little insight into what drives me absolutely bonkers, as well as my interpretation - and explanation of said interpretation - of each of the songs.

• (let me) give you my life 
• move (like a bird of paradise)
• fall in love (just a little)